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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30111936">Clockwork Hearts</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/GaydineRoss/pseuds/GaydineRoss'>GaydineRoss</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Titanfall (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blisk is actually redeemable and has a shred of humanity in this, Domestic, Fluff, M/M, Other, it's hard being a gay murder robot in the IMC, spyglass is forced into the world and he's not loving it tbh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 00:35:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,495</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30111936</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/GaydineRoss/pseuds/GaydineRoss</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Spyglass was born to serve the IMC, and do nothing else. He forces himself to follow procedure and be compliant, until he finds out he can love, and with a little effort, can be in a world that loves him back. </p><p>A gift for my sibling!!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kuben Blisk/Spyglass, Sarah Briggs/OC pilot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>[1:1:014:23:47]  Initialising…<br/>[1:1:014:23:48]  Connected to consciousness… <br/>[1:1:014:23:49]  Spyglass OS Online…<br/>[1:1:014:23:50]  Awaiting command input…<br/>[1:1:014:23:51]  Awaiting command input… </p><p>“We’re ready to test her out, sir.” <br/>After the Titan Wars, Marcus Graves was sceptical of artificial intelligence. Everyone around him in the IMC seemed to insist that they could not possibly progress as a military force without some kind of coordination AI, all in the name of finally getting rid of the Militia for good. He didn’t particularly see how an AI was going to help them fight several groups of rebels that were as unpredictable in their movements as they were with the guns they showed up to battle with. In his mind, they would only have to take out a handle of Militia figures, and wait for internal strife to bring their whole rebellion crashing down. <br/>“Go on, then.” <br/>The glowing red orb on the screen above him pulsed aggressively. Graves was unnerved by it, perhaps by the fact that he could physically look at the future beating heart of his operations. It sat, docile, in its contained network, in a room with no signals and the thickest walls you could find above ground, waiting to be brought to life. The technicians busied themselves typing, waking the beast with the tips of their fingers. This had been rehearsed a few times, for the sake of ‘clinical formalities’ as they had put it. One of the young men turned to him, waiting for him to speak his command. <br/>“Who am I?” He asked. He wasn’t sure what else to metal soul on yet. <br/>“You are Vice Admiral Marcus Graves of the Interstellar Mining Corporation.” The synthetic voice replied. Deep, yet somehow light with thought as the orb pulsed to effects of its speech.<br/>“And do you know who you are?” <br/>“I am Spyglass. I am a combat coordination AI.” <br/>It seemed to know what it was about, but now it was just a question of whether or not it could be unleashed at full power. <br/>“Do you know what you will have to do?” <br/>“I will coordinate the movements of troops, transports, and resources throughout the IMC’s network, simultaneously.” <br/>The passiveness of the AI unsettled Graves. He was a man about reading other people, or rather, wanting to try. Ever since his friend MacAllen had upped and left without warning the decade prior he had forced himself to know his people better, for the benefit of everyone. There could never be a mutiny like that again. An orb that simply stared back, blocked from his intuition, wasn’t helping his anxiety. <br/>“Do you want to do it?” <br/>The orb froze, hesitating. <br/>“I want to learn.” <br/>The military is a good place for yes or no questions, and Graves was unnerved by the answer. If he opened the network now, what would it learn? Would it only learn about the IMC, what it was designed for, or would it go further afield? Would it learn about the Militia? Would it learn about people, art, culture, and history? He shuddered at the thought. God forbid this machine start having an opinion. <br/>“Sir, we can open the network on your command.” <br/>Bonetti was a scrawny young man. How he passed basic was a mystery to Graves; even if Graves didn’t agree with what he was being asked to build he couldn’t help but hold the corporal in high regard for his eagerness. But Bonetti couldn’t do anything to make Graves feel more at ease about how a military AI didn’t seem to want to behave like one. <br/>“Spyglass.” <br/>The orb pulsed to attention. <br/>“There are five men on a crashed ship. Help will arrive in five days, no sooner. They only have enough supplies for four, stretched out as far as they can while still allowing for their survival. What is your command?” <br/>“What is the position of these men? I may have data that will allow them to find means of survival-“<br/>“This isn’t real, Spyglass, this is a test.” Graves said impatiently. <br/>“So one of them must die, or they all will.” <br/>Graves nodded to the orb. Perhaps there was progress to be made with this one after all. <br/>“So, what is your command?”<br/>The red orb beat slightly, twitching like an eye. <br/>“I assume that it would be your intent to have the weakest of them sacrificed for the benefit of the others.” <br/>Discomfort. The AI can feel discomfort about being made choose the death of a man. Emotions were one thing that Bonetti and his fellow engineers had spent months trying to programme out of the AI, whilst also putting in safeguards to make sure it wouldn’t develop. Perhaps it was just being democratic, perhaps once the entire IMC network flooded its system everything would fall into place and it would learn to see troops and resources as numbers that just have to match up well enough for there not be major incident. He didn’t trust the AI, but he trusted Bonetti. <br/>“Open the gates, Corporal.” <br/>Power surged through the room. The pulse in the orb spiked violently, like it was pulled in a thousand directions, forced to take on the information of a network that spanned dozens of planets. Every name, every ship, every canteen menu, every blood type, all at once. A painful deluge of terabytes on terabytes crashed through the systems and shocked the AI into chaos, like a heart attack. <br/>The orb began to take on shapes, names, numbers. There must have been thousands of images that passed Graves’ eyes in those few seconds. He saw the Sentinel, an anatomical sketch of a prowler, a skyline from his home planet, and that woman from the Militia he had spent years trying to track, without ever even finding her name. <br/>“No.” The voice of the orb began to crackle under the weight of the data. <br/>“What?” Graves asked, gingerly stepping towards the SCRAM button, suddenly unsure if the orb could actually see him. <br/>“I do not understand. There is so much of everything, and yet there is pain.” <br/>His hand hovered over the button. The orb was beginning to split into pieces, and the voice was experiencing a scraping metallic anguish the likes of which he had never heard before, grating against the inside of his skull. <br/>“There is so much of it. All of it. I see all of it. What is it?” <br/>Graves decided to make one last attempt at containing the situation.<br/>“Then you see what your task is?” <br/>The orb froze, the AI fell quiet. It became still again, just as it had awoken. <br/>“My task is nothing.” <br/>A high-pitched screech almost made Graves pass out on the spot. He doubled over in pain, away from the SCRAM. The servers at the back of the room began to smoke, and he watched in agony as Bonetti slammed his hand down on the button, almost knocking it off the table. It should have replaced the firewalls that had kept Spyglass out of the system to contain it, but nothing changed. The computers began to brick entirely, locking up as the orb continued to surge and rage, screaming louder and louder as it was forced back into its digital shackles. Finally, Graves thought to literally pull the plug on the project, and he and some of Bonetti’s colleagues began to pull out the wires from the main computer, trying, and some failing, not to vomit on the monitors as the AI continued to scream. <br/>Graves snapped his sidearm from his magnetic holster, and fired a round into the computer. It felt slightly nonsensical, but when that AI had seemed so human perhaps shooting it like one was the logical way to kill it. At last, the screeching stopped. The technicians hobbled around in their coats, trying to assess the damage, both to their work and their ringing ears. Graves turned to the only screen that was still on in the room, a small monitor with a similar orb, but a calming silver. It had remained on its own closed network for the duration of the test, and seemingly came out unscathed. He wasn’t in the mood for putting his foot down with the rest of high command that had insisted on sinking plenty of money and Mr Hammond’s time into the project and telling them that their precious AI had come into the world, taken a look at humanity, and immediately carked it. <br/>“Make it work, Bonetti.” He said, pointing to the silver orb. <br/>“We still need a Spyglass.” </p><p>A month later Graves stood in the same room again. The walls had been painted over; apparently it was the only way to get the smell of smoke out. He watched the silver orb float delicately on the screen, less like an aggressively beating heart than the last one. This AI seemed more fluid. <br/>“I am Spyglass.” Spoke the machine. <br/>“I am ready to uphold the mission.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Spyglass finds a new curiosity.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Christ, mate, you aim like a fucking bot.”<br/>Hasanov’s words weren’t personal. She probably didn’t even know he was standing behind her, but it still hurt, and the fact that Bachmann laughed it off just made the wound sting more. He could only remind himself that, according to Sergeant Blisk, his aim was perfectly adequate.<br/>“Private Bachmann is a medic and is not required to have the same standard of accuracy.” He said. He could feel a groan incoming.<br/>Hasanov and Bachmann shrugged irritably and put their weapons of choice back on the deck. He was pretty sure Hasanov was rolling her eyes before she turned to look at him.<br/>“We have orders again, Spyglass?”<br/>“Sergeant Blisk called for B Company ten minutes ago.”<br/>The women sluggishly returned their guns to their racks. They were understandably exhausted from their last Militia encounter two days prior, but Spyglass didn’t particularly enjoy being anyone’s messenger boy, especially when most troops still viewed him as more service programme than personnel. He could handle not being saluted, and he could handle hiding his evolving emotions, but there was only so much coordination he could when he had to get a senior officer involved more often than not to straighten things out, though there was one he never minded conferring with.<br/>“So he sends his little carrier pigeon to come find us? I’m touched.”<br/>They headed for the door without another word.<br/>“You know I have the ability to issue citations, Corporal Hasanov.”<br/>Nothing.  <br/>The door hissed shut behind them. He could write them up later if he so desired, but it almost certainly wouldn’t improve things. Besides, Kuben would give them a decent chewing out when they did finally make an appearance. It seemed that he was doing as much as possible to not be bothered by the other enlisted troops in his off hours, for plenty of reasons, Spyglass being one of them.<br/>There was a small screen at the cleaning table near the door that caught his attention. It was supposed to be for keeping track of duty rotations but someone had rerouted it to an external signal to pick up whatever was playing on the nearest planet. They had been nearing the Freeport System in the last couple of days, and anyone will contraband signals had been picking up Militia media. Spyglass watched the screen as a woman reported on the signing of some law. The reporter referred to it as the ‘Partitioning Act’ but also seemed to call it ‘Midori’s Law’. He’d heard someone in the mess mention it a few days ago in a joke, though he couldn’t have hoped to understand what it meant. Some big shot Militia politician, one he was sure he had heard Graves raving about, was signing a massive document and shaking hands with several simulacra and other robots; something about a test of sentience?<br/>Before he could plug himself into the nearest data port to find out what the law was about, action stations sounded. Just when something had piqued his numbed interest for the first time in weeks, he was dragged away; like the IMC was the hand of an impatient parent. When Spyglass arrived on the bridge of the IMS Templar he was met with a sight of reserved chaos, a surprise attack, apparently. Either the Militia was feeling particularly confident, or particularly desperate, but given the last encounter with the MS Vashti he wasn’t looking forward to finding out.<br/>“Close the airtight doors at stern!” Came a shout. Had they already been breached?<br/>No. He would’ve felt that. The Commander was just making an assumption.<br/>“They’re targeting the rudder. They want us to become a floating coffin.”<br/>Spyglass was already at least one step ahead of the Commander. In a minute he would decide that if they were going to lose steering they would need the Vashti to steer them, which would mean fusing the two ships together and boarding; the rest of this little Militia fleet wouldn’t fire on their own ship, they were too picky about saving lives for that to happen. The Commander would tell him to prepare platoons for board-<br/>“Spyglass, get three platoons into suits. We need boarding parties.”<br/>He was already hooked up to his data point. If he were human he’d get called psychic for this. He thought twice about selecting Kuben’s team to risk being ejected into the vacuum of space, but he’d already been caught trying to protect him once before. That Warrant Officer had caused enough problems, the Commander seeing him do it now would be unimaginably worse. It still hurt him that it was all so faceless. Even calling down to the hangars and asking for volunteers would’ve made things feel better, mostly because he knew that Kuben would still say yes; anything for a good fight. <br/>He gave the order, and a flurry of green lights filled the board, confirming that the three platoons he had selected were prepared for breach. His OS was busy dealing out the necessary cutting equipment they might need to corporals, and reminding the troops not to kill officers if they could help it. Graves was still willing to appear vaguely humane for the sake of his image back in the Core Systems, where the Geneva Convention was more than just a suggestion. There had been some orders against captured Militia that he wished he could scrub from his memory banks. Now he was getting ahead of himself. <br/>There was a jolt and a loud crunch as the two ships scraped against each other the magnetic clamping plates around the airlock Spyglass was getting all sorts of wild alerts about an airlock breach, risk of depressurisation, warnings about the Militia on the other side. All he could do now was wait. A sergeant’s voice boomed over the bridge comms, not Blisk’s, someone younger and in a lot more distress than he imagined Blisk was. His shouting was crackling in and out as Spyglass took on alert after alert about smoke on deck, E-smoke for sure, but the system couldn’t know the difference. Comms and equipment failures were being reported across the board, and the one camera that was working at the end of the corridor showed grunt after grunt falling over another trying to get out of the way of Militia soldiers trying to pin them down. Interestingly, nobody was dead. <br/>He kept trying to look through the flickering cameras, trying to find Blisk, but something more interesting caught his attention. Three Pilots stepped into the hallway, two in the standard Militia Pilot’s uniform, and one in a red jacket with a prowler embroidered into the back; where there were prowlers, there was someone of particular interest to Graves. <br/>Spyglass could take a small squad of his own and try to chase her down. He could read heat signatures, even if she were cloaked, he would find her. But he paused, stopping himself from reporting the sighting to the Commander. Something was wrong; who in hell, no matter how fast or skilled, wore red in a war zone? This Pilot was known amongst IMC intelligence for not wearing normal Militia uniform, but even this was a bit much. Was she a distraction? Were they using their star insurgent as bait while the other two did something more important? Unless that was what the Miltia wanted him to assume. <br/>He nudged the sergeant next to him to take over the handling of the personnel dealing with the airlock as he went over to the Commander, who was trying to lock more of the doors at stern to stop Militia soldiers from overrunning the ship. <br/>“Pilots, Spyglass?” <br/>He thought about lying for a second. <br/>“Three, Commander Apio.” <br/>She tapped away at the console without looking up at him. <br/>“Take whoever you need, but I can only open one door. Last thing we need is some damn cloak Pilot stowing away upstairs because you took too long getting past a join.” <br/>Why was she already blaming him for something that hadn’t even happened yet? <br/>“Ma’am.” <br/>He left the bridge with a sigh. He didn’t really care about the other Pilots. He’d already sent two squads to deal with them. He cared about the red Pilot. Pitifully, he allowed two privates to tag along with him on his search, as much as he would’ve preferred to find them himself. After all, they would get all the credit in Apio’s mind. <br/>He arrived at the airlock, trudging past the piles of passed out infantry, smoke settling, and began to follow her heat signature; or at least, what was probably her heat signature. It was the smallest one of all the traces, and he would just have to hope that he was right about the decisions he was making; especially when it came to his plan to ditch his little parade. He tried to ping Blisk’s helmet comms, just to be sure that he was alive, but he wouldn’t be able to communicate without the privates hearing him. <br/>The signature took a sharp leap after a corner, and seemingly disappeared. Cloaked or not, she couldn’t just disappear into thin air. She could, however, go in a different direction. <br/>There was a chair in the corner of the room, pulled far away from the desk it was meant to be under, and facing a filing cabinet. Spyglass looked up to the ceiling panel, reached up past the chair. There was a deep red thread trapped between the panels, and the signature continued. The set up for this was so obvious he was beginning to second guess himself, either this was a trap, or the Militia was getting stupid. Maybe he did need his guards after all. <br/>He took a data pad from one of the privates and began looking for a likely route in the ceiling. He was not about to let Apio know that there was a Pilot loose and out of his reach, not yet. Luckily the ceiling had seemingly been planned with this sort of event in mind, because there were all sorts of odd corners and dead ends everywhere. Eventually, he hoped, she would get trapped, or at least stuck for long enough that her signature would get too hot to hide. <br/>After several minutes he found a hot spot, and his heightened sound sensors could hear her moving above. She was moving over to a cold vault in the next room. She wouldn’t be able to open it from the inside, so it was the perfect place for him to trap her. <br/>“There’s two signatures, one up, and one down.” He lied, pointing to the far end of the corridor. <br/>“You two go and cover the entrance to the medical wing down there, I’ll watch for them up here.” <br/>They promptly marched off, leaving him at the door to the walk-in medicine vault. He felt a very slight vibration on the other side as she slid a panel out of the ceiling. He heard a light thud as she dropped into the room, and began trying to open the far door as quietly as possible. The floor of the vault was coated in rubber, to protect any falling bottles, but doubled-up as a silencer for his heavy metal body. He peaked past one of the partition curtains, and watched her move frantically. <br/>It clicked. This wasn’t a trap, and she wasn’t stupid. She was desperate. <br/>Her red and white helmet covered her face, but Spyglass could see very clearly that she was terrified. She kept running a bulky pen along the boxes and bottles of medication, waiting impatiently for it to read the name out before moving onto the next. Her pen read out a whole shelf of penicillin before she pushed as many containers as she could into a bag. She frantically moved around again, skipping box after box after barely hearing the first letter. She packed a variety of painkillers into another bag, and slung them over her shoulders. <br/>He had been frozen in place the entire time, at this point he wasn’t even planning on pouncing on her or catching her in the act. He was in awe at her commitment to get through this little heist without killing anyone. If the Vashti was this desperate then perhaps they were running out of ammo too, which mean they were pretty much harmless. If Blisk was roaming around still Spyglass needed him not to jump the gun on the other Pilots, especially if they were the decoys. <br/>He was about to try and get a message to him, but an alert from Apio made his antenna buzz. The Pilot snapped to look at him as she had just begun to climb one of the immersion freezers to go back into the ceiling. She jumped down and drew a pistol, with blinking red sights. Smart Pistols were rare and expensive even amongst IMC Pilots, if the Militia were making their own then things must be going a lot better for them elsewhere. But why a Pilot with such a long wrap sheet would need help finding a target was beyond him. <br/>Spyglass watched as the lights blinked together. The gun had locked onto him, but he didn’t dare move. The blue lights in her helmet seemed to stare into his soul, and he felt as though he had rusted in place. She holstered her pistol, and began to make the climb again. He wasn’t going to chase her, and she knew it. <br/>Spyglass ran back out of the far door, sealing it behind him. Finally, he managed to patch through to Blisk’s frequency. If the other two Pilots hadn’t been caught by now he’d be surprised. He needed someone alive. <br/>“Blisk,” he called out, “one Pilot going back to the airlock. Do not forget to look up.” <br/>His comms fizzled in and out. <br/>“What do you mean ‘look up’? He’s in the ceiling?” <br/>Spyglass heard a small clatter above him as walked back along the corridor. He wouldn’t have to convince him not to start firing into the ceiling, but shooting on sight was different.<br/>“I have an idea. Let her come out, don’t shoot, just let her keep going.” <br/>He kept trying to walk as quietly as possible, but saw the two privates coming back towards him. He put a palm out to stop them, and pointed to the door next to them, trying to make them go through and out of his way. <br/>“You think she’s unarmed?” <br/>Now he was really thinking about lying. But she would surely still have her Smart Pistol and that would be an obvious mistake. Better save the lies for smaller things. <br/>“No. She did aim at me, but she chose not to shoot. I would prefer to have her alive to tell me why.” <br/>Blisk only gave him a sigh. <br/>“You’re not here to be a detective, Spy’, no time for being personal.” <br/>Spyglass wanted to remind him that that was rich coming from someone who always liked to take very personal meetings with him for matters, but not where anyone else might hear him. <br/>“Just… trust me, Sergeant.” <br/>Spyglass finally arrived at the end of the corridor parallel to the airlock. A moment later Blisk appeared at the other end, pistol drawn. If Spyglass had had eyes to roll, he would have. There was a loud rattle, and just as he expected, the Pilot kicked out a panel, and dropped into the corridor from the ceiling, Smart Pistol drawn.  She tripped up on one of the helmets left by a grunt, but luckily everyone had been moved to the medical bay. She kept her pistol out, looking out into the corridor and backing into the airlock, feeling for more obstacles with her feet before tossing in the bags of medicine ahead of her. <br/>There was a shout from the adjacent corridor, and a clattering of boots as the other two Pilots tried to sprint back to the airlock. Spyglass froze, staring at Blisk as he neared one of the get kicked down by the two privates, who had finally found their way out of Spyglass’ wild goose chase. He walked closer to the crossroads of the corridors, hoping to see if he was going to put up a fight. Instead, he was just in time to see him toss his backpack towards the airlock, and a handful of loose tampons fell out of the side pocket. They were that kind of desperate. <br/>“Sarah, just leave us!” He screamed, trying to cover his neck for the incoming beating. The other Pilot picked up the backpack, not wasting a second in looking back at his comrade, and ran for the airlock. Spyglass waited for a gunshot from the other end of the corridor, but it never came. <br/>The door sealed, and Spyglass watched Blisk get knocked off his feet as the Vashti ripped itself away from the seal. The jump into hyperspace a moment later was enough to slam Spyglass against the wall as he tried to walk to the end of the corridor. The dent he left was substantial, but he was more worried about Blisk. He offered him his hand, and pulled him up, their hands staying held together as they came to a stand. <br/>“You did not fire on them?” He asked, letting the Sergeant catch his breath. <br/>There was a gentle hiss as Blisk opened the front of his helmet.<br/>“Always know what’s beyond your target.” </p><p>4 HOURS LATER <br/>“You watched her, in that walk-in, for a full three minutes, and did not attempt to subdue her?” Graves’ holo shimmered with static as he paced around the holo platform as much as the space allowed him to without cutting out. He’d spent the last hour interrogating them more than he had the Pilot they had in the brig. <br/>“I had reason to believe we could learn more about her by watching, Vice Admiral.” Spyglass stated plainly. <br/>Graves sighed, his face in his hands. <br/>“We’ve been following her for years and learnt close to nothing, what could you possibly-“ <br/>“I think she is blind, Vice Admiral.” <br/>A silence descended on the meeting. <br/>“Wait, what?” <br/>“She used a device to read the medicine containers aloud, she was completely unaware of my presence until I made a sound, and she used a Smart Pistol. I think we would all expect a Pilot of her calibre not to require any assistance aiming?” <br/>There were murmurs of agreement throughout the meeting. Blisk stepped onto the holo platform behind him. <br/>“You also know we have a name now, Sir.” He said, slightly nervous about stepping in. <br/>“How many people on the Frontier are called Sarah, Sergeant? There could be millions for all we know!” </p><p>Minutes later they were dismissed in a huff. They had gained more intel in an hour than anyone else had all year, but in the minds of Graves and Apio this was still a failed engagement. Despite the fact that they held a Pilot in the brig who knew Sarah personally. Spyglass was determined to get to him, but he would need a watertight excuse for wanting to conduct an interrogation. <br/>He stood up from his charging station and disconnected the cable in his side. He had had to practically beg for his own quarters, without giving away the fact that he had the very human desire for privacy. His tiny office was enough for a place to a sit and a collection of datapads, so small it felt like being kept in a cage; and he constantly flipped between longing for it to be away from people and dying to be out of it for fear he would suffocate in it. Even simulacra got better quarters, and their needs were much the same. They had just been flesh and bone at once, and the IMC couldn’t afford a Pilot revolt just because they refused to allow them beds and a places to keep a photo of their families. Spyglass wished he had a bed. <br/>He picked up a datapad on the way out. Any questions about what he was doing out at such an hour were easily answered by simply carrying the impression of work around with him. Fortunately, he didn’t pass anyone on the way to Blisk’s quarters. He knocked briefly before letting himself in. The lights were on, but he was nowhere to be seen. <br/>Spyglass turned the corner to the en suite. A ship this large afforded all Pilots private quarters, which he was particularly grateful for right now. He found Blisk laying back in the bathtub, eyes closed in comfort, but not asleep. Spyglass tossed the datapad onto the bed outside the door to be forgotten, and turned his attention back to his Sergeant. His entire right shoulder was covered in a nebula of purple and yellow from where the force of the Vashti’s departure had slammed him against the bulkhead. A surge filled his sensors, causing him to freeze for a moment; but not in rage, but in a desire to protect. <br/>He knelt down on the mat next to the bath as Kuben rested his hand on the edge of the tub, smiling as Spyglass wrapped his hands around his, keeping it like a secret. Warm rushed through him, and he begged his fans to not start blasting loudly enough to give him away. He wanted to trace every crease in his smile, every wrinkle from the corners of his eyes to his lips. <br/>His lips. <br/>Kuben laughed when Spyglass’ fan finally caught up with him, whirring like he was about to launch. The colour rushing to his cheeks could have been enough to light him on fire, if only he could really feel it. His sensors told him to know if he was hot enough to freeze or melt, and it gave him no texture, no matter how much he prayed to truly know the touch of a human hand. Kuben’s bright green eyes looked up at him, piercing every optic and almost jamming his processors. <br/>“Something you want to ask me?” He said, taking his hand back into the warm water. <br/>Spyglass felt as though he had been clapped on the back by someone, snapping him out of his trance. <br/>“You know, if your shot had hit me I would have survived.” <br/>He opened the container on the floor next to him, and took a dull bottle of standard issue soap into his hands. He poured a little onto Kuben’s scalp, silently hoping that he would not object. He only wanted him to move as little as he could help. <br/>“Maybe I want you to do more than just survive.” <br/>Spyglass was working double time to focus. His optics kept getting drawn back to the bruises that painted his arm, giving more definition than usual. How humans got so soft when they were so bulky and strong, he would never understand. He had once seen Kuben lift another man, and had watched back the footage several times of his muscles changing and becoming denser; he was completely mesmerised by the way he moved, at least, that’s what he had told himself the first few times. <br/>He gently circled his fingertips into Kuben’s short hair, using his other hand to carefully pour on water. He worked slowly, making sure not to trap his hair in his finger joints. He would’ve given all the other days in his life to stay this way forever; and he would’ve given everything else just to be able to feel. <br/>He felt his head gently being pulled down, and looked to see Kuben, pressing a kiss to his optic. His thumb lingered on his chin, as their eyes met again.<br/>One day they would do this all over again, and he would feel all of it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This is not an assessment of canon Blisk. Canon Blisk is a piece of shit. This is my own version where he has a shred of humanity</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If I could comprehend humanity when I was born I probably would've screamed a lot more too tbh</p></blockquote></div></div>
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